David Henderson (14 June 1889 – 14 November 1998) was a British centenarian who was the oldest known man in Scotland and the United Kingdom at the time of his death. He was also Scotland’s oldest man ever until his age was surpassed by Alf Smith in 2017.

Biography

David Henderson was born in Angus, Scotland, UK, on 14 June 1889. He grew up on his father’s farm in Alyth, near Glamis Castle. He had dance lessons as a child, and his dance teacher would later teach Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, the future Queen Mother. Henderson once waved to Queen Victoria on a passing train.

By 1921, Henderson had bought his own farm in Laurencekirk, Aberdeenshire, where he would live and work for the remaining 77 years of his life. During his adulthood, he was reported to have been 6’3” (190.5 cm) tall. He suffered from rheumatism as a young man, and was cured by an Australian doctor within two years.

Henderson married a woman named Elizabeth Cargill in 1919, who died in 1973 without having children. Henderson’s father died aged 98 and his sister reached 96. In his later life, his nephew, Douglas Cargill, assisted him with the farm work. Henderson himself lived in a nursing home that had been built on his farmland. At the age of 107, he had a pacemaker fitted, being one of the oldest people in the world to undergo such a procedure.

On 7 August 1997, aged 108, Henderson became the oldest man in the United Kingdom following the death of 109-year-old Vinson Gulliver of Manchester. Henderson came down with a chest infection a week before his death, and his final goodbye was to loyal farm worker of 53 years, George Thomson.

Henderson died in Laurencekirk, Aberdeenshire, Scotland, UK, on 14 November 1998 at the age of 109 years, 153 days, as the last British man born in the 1880s. His successor as the United Kingdom’s oldest man was Harry Halford (1891 – 2000).